Like Water for Chocolate

Our Saturday workshops at Slow Food were all very interesting.  Jeri, Ruth and I attended the Small Scale Producers workshop to talk about difficulties and solutions to small scale production around the world.  It turns out many farmers want to make jam on their farmsteads and can't due to regulations.  In France, they have beem using shared-use rentable kitchens (like in NY state) and one woman from Colorado that does goat's cheeses, milk, and eggs admitted that she simply flies under the radar.  Interesting stuff!
Beth attended the USA meeting for Slow Food.  Carlo Petrini was there and said that there was going to be a Slow Food  conference in the USA next year, either in NYC or Washington DC.  Stay tuned..

Beth was going to attend the fisherman's class, but the previous class in the room, on nutrition, ran over, so Beth listened to that one too!  The presentation was about how in Tanzania, one of the main sources of food given to children is black tea.  As you can imagine, they have discovered that it's not such a fabulous source of nutrients for grown children!  So, they presented on how they have been educating parents on feeding the kids a porridge/cereal from grains,rather than black tea.
Then, when that class finally let out, the Fisherman's meeting was able to begin.  Alice Water's started by reflecting on how she had fallen in love with the fresh oysters in France and that when she tried to order them for Chez Panisse, they didn't taste the same.  Then one day, her French oyster order didn't come in so she ordered oysters from her local fisherman and realized that the local, fresh oysters were wonderful like the French ones.  It's nice to know even Alica can "a-ha!" moments!

We decided for lunch, that we needed to venture out of the conference area, across the was to Eataly, the store.  I had barely even heard of them before, but Beth and Jeri had and were excited to go to one in Italy.  Well, what a "knock your socks off" kind of place.  Eataly is a combination high end grocery store while also having small, themed restaurants within each department of the store.  We decided to have our lunch in the bakery and pizza department of the store to have pizzas.  Jeri, Beth, and Ruth decided to have the traditional margherita pizza, while I had the pizza of the day.  Now, the pizza had a pork sausage topping along with their description of "rape" (pronounced "rrrraaahhhpaaay").  When the waitress gave the description,  I said to the girls, "Oh, broccoli.  Fabulous."  When the pizza came, though.  There was sausage, yes; but there were also sliced rounds of this yellow stuff.  I bit into it and announced," Ohhh, it's turnip!"  I must say, it tasted fabulous.  My mis-translation served me well.  A fulfilling lunch.

After lunch, I attended the performance of the Sicilian singing group that was staying at the same hotel as us.  When my little Sicilian friend and I were having our choppy conversation on Friday morning,  I was able to understand that they were performing on Saturday afternoon.  You should have seen their lovely regalia.  They had on full length black capes over their black vests and black pants.  What a sight!  The whole performance was fun.  Jeri and Ruth were able to attend the second half.
 
Walking around the Salon d' Gusto again, a guy walking in the opposite direction of me, stopped and said, "Hey, your that girl that was one group ahead of me at CIA that was going to go make jam!"  He explained that he had been in the class behind be in the bachelors program at The Culinary Institute when I was about to graduate.  Apparently, he had met me while we were both in the Honor Society and I had told him that I was going to go make jam after I graduated.  I must admit, I didn't remember any of that and he explained that he remembers faces well.  He asked how that had worked out and I put my arm around Beth and said, "Well, pretty good.  This is Beth, the Queen Jammer!"  He is a chef in NJ now.

After the days work at the conference, we decided that we were going to head out to have dinner, rather than eat the ho-hum hotel food.  We had gotten a recommendation for a restaurant in Turin and took a cab there.  We checked out the menu and the prices when we arrived and were disappointed.  While it looked like a lovely place inside, the prices were sky high and the choices of food were not equal to the price.  So, we wandered further to a pastry and chocolate shop that was open, got a coffee, and asked the woman behind the counter to recommend a great place to eat.  She walked to the door that led to the back work room and called out the chocolatier.  Gunther (we'll call him that) was a talk, strapping lad.  We asked him in Italian for a place and he looked a little flustered.  He gave some small instructions in Italian, but I kept hearing German words slip in. I was about to mention a language switch when he apologized and explained that it was unfortunate that he can really only explain in German how to get to the restaurant.  I perked right up and explained, in German, that that was going to be no problem!  Well, Gunther smiled so wide and breathed such a sigh of relief, I thought he was going to melt the chocolate case in front of him.   He happily explained in German the direction, streets, and landmarks to get to Zeus'. And we were on our way! 
Gunther gave perfect directions and Zeus' was another hit.  It was a local, family friendly spot but the food was splendid.  (It was at about this point that we realized that we were going to little, local spots every night, without any other tourists or English speakers  around us.  Just Italians!)
Jeri and Beth both got the swordfish carpaccio, while Ruth got a green salad and I got a focaccia with speck (prosciutto-like stuff).  The carpaccio was, once again, divine while my focaccia was pleasingly crispy, crunchy with the lovely saltiness of the ham on top.
For our entrees, Jeri got the spinach risotto, Beth ordered the carbonara, I set my mind on Arrabiatta, and Ruth ventured forth with the whole, grilled bronzini.  Jeri's risotto was positively perfect.  The color of the rice dish was supremely bright, fresh green within the ultimate creamy risotto that had that dreamy little bite of the rice still.  Beth and I had lovely pasta dishes, but the really winner was Ruth's grilled fish.  Our waiter presented it whole, head on, and grilled to her and then (in this family pizzaria, essentially) proceeded to do a table side deboning of this luxuriousness.  And what a job he did.  You would have thought you were in the white linen restaurant instead of the place around the corner.  It was perfect.  Perfectly cooked, filleted, and dreamy.
For dessert, we had lemon tart and chocolate souffle, both of which were slight surprises when they came to the table.  The lemon tart was a slice of lemon meringue pie which while not being was we expected, tasted delish.  The chocolate souffle was a chocolate cake with ganache on top.  Since ganache is, really, it's own food group and one that I eat as often as possible, we all tucked into both as if it was exactly what we had in our minds!
We had the restaurant call us a taxi and when we got into the cab, I told him that our hotel name, the city, and street name.  Well, mister cab driver and I weren't speaking the same because about 2 minutes later, we had to reroute to the actual destination we wanted.  He had misunderstood me (I'm sure I did a poor job) so after righting ourselves, we arrived to the hotel tired, content and ready for bed.  But wait! Not just yet.  We got into the door and heard music and singing in the dinning room.  We follow to sounds and our Sicilian singing group was tearing the room off, complete with accordions, guitars, tambourines, and drums.  The next song was one to dance to and Don Lewis of Wild Hive Farms and I cut a rug while Beth and my little, Sicilian friend paired off.  Mid way through the song, my little friend switched us up and he and I did a little two step (I couldn't really get the full name on his tag, but I saw something like "agnoli").  What a hoot and a holler!  After that, we really, really needed to go to bed and so we did.

Sunday, the last day of Terra Madre had a few great workshops. Jeri, Ruth, and I attended a presentation from a panel of chefs around the world talking about how they have achieved sustainability, overcome obstacles, and accomplish using local foods.  All of them were different and intriguing.
Beth went to "Grainery of Knowledge" with Carlo Petrini and Andonna Shiva. 
Ruth and I decided that we needed to get chocolate to come back with to the USA.  After having much too much fun acquiring yummies, we decided we needed to get a yummy for ourselves.  We had seen the fried olives in a part of the event called "Street Foods".  They're vendors from all over the world selling street food from their country.  Ruth and I ponied up to the bar and had some.  Pretty amazing.  It was a green olive that was then stuffed with veal, breaded and fried.  As you can imagine, the filling was majestic and the outside was perfectly crunchy.  We decided this snack had really made our day.

We were leaving the conference before the official closing ceremonies due to bungling of the travel plans by Terra Madre (they wanted to dump us at the airport at 1:45 AM monday morning to get the morning flights.)
We took the bus to the Milan airport which would then take us to our hotel.  A gentlemen sitting next to us overheard that we made jam.  He handed us his brochure and he runs a group of women in Transylvania that make jams from wild fruits foraged in the forests!  What are the odds.  Jeri and Beth have been scheming to do an international jam tour of different marmalade makers of England, Ireland, Whales, and Scotland and we might just have to squeeze in Eastern Europe!
Once we got to the hotel and dropped our stuff at our rooms, we ventured into the heart of Milan.  We visited the gorgeous Duomo, galleria, and Opera house, and had wine and snacks within the marble floored galleria.  I had a lemon sorbet that could have stopped a clock.  Quite a number!

We  made our way to the area that was recommended that we get dinner: Le Brera.  It's a section of streets that have many restaurants, one after the other to choose from.  I can't remember that name of the place we picked, but no matter; it was great.  Ruth had a salad that we shared with the table, Jeri and Beth shared a plate of herb stuffed ravioli while I had the David and Goliath's version of Bolognese style lasagna.  All three dishes were unique and spectacular.  My lasagna was, of course, nothing like you've ever gotten in America (which was why I HAD to order it!)  Fresh layers of pasta, light, delicate meat with a creamy style sauce.
For our entrees, Beth and Jeri shared Braided fish (yes, it was ACTUALLY braided fillets of fish) which were delicious.  Ruth has the ravioli filled with fish and I had another stick-to-your-ribs, dyeing mans last meal of braised veal cheeks with polenta.  My brain must be preparing to thicken up for winter because it would appear that that is just what I'm doing!
We were too full for dessert, and so had our cookie and  lemoncello and took the train back to the hotel.

This morning, Monday, Jeri and Ruth took their flight back to JFK while Beth and I are staying another day.  Beth and I made a dutiful attempt at visiting the city of Milan again.  But when we got into the heart of the city, with a hell of a rain and wind event going on, to try and see Leonardo Di Vinci's Last Supper at the little church that he  painted it in the basement of the refectory - they were closed (closed on all Mondays).  So we decided to head to the landmark 124 year old food store, Pecks, which was ALSO closed.  We found out that a Salvodor Dali exhibit was in town, but that wouldn't be open until after everyone in the universe had their afternoon coffee and rest at 2:30.  So, we had a hot chocolate, cut our losses, and headed back to the hotel.  In the end, it really was a rainy, hunker down and take a nap, sort of day. 
Not a problem!  It forced us to catch up with our blog!